


#7DF00A

by Simply_Isnt_On



Category: The Bright Sessions (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Holidays, Painting, Stress, art therapy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-31
Updated: 2017-12-31
Packaged: 2019-02-25 19:58:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,007
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13220103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Simply_Isnt_On/pseuds/Simply_Isnt_On
Summary: The thing about people, Caleb thought, as he cleaned up his space, when he was putting away his paints, was that they came with their own palette.





	#7DF00A

**Author's Note:**

> This is my Secret Santa gift, and is dedicated to the lovely audioyikes on tumblr. Happy Holidays, Shawna! Hope you had some great days, and a Happy New Year! <3

School was worse than usual right before winter break. Everyone was stressing about midterms in shades of jarring yellowy-purple, especially because college applications were already out, or were about to go out; kids were cramming in the halls in greeny-pink distress, or writing last-minute admissions essays in a mess of stress that made Caleb feel like he was going to crawl out of his skin and into something bubbling and the texture of cottage cheese, or else only thinking about the holidays.

The holidays. A whole other headache for Caleb, dressed up in flashing white lights and flashing yellow emotions, bruised indigo worry about the gifts people wanted to give others meeting ugly Christmas sweaters and that particular shade of bitter taupe that happens when someone says “Happy Holidays!” in response to “Merry Christmas!” (Caleb hates that one the most, especially since he started dating Adam- not everyone celebrates Christmas, but the bitterness is like rotten sand pressing against his tongue, even without the glares.)

What with all the fuss, the last week before break has been a nightmare. Even time with Adam, which usually calms him down, is nearly impossible to find, what with football and homework keeping them apart. So when he got home on Friday after school let out for the break, it was all he could do not to slam the door to his room in his eagerness to get away from it all.

Without even bothering to take off his shoes, he dropped his bag and flopped face-first onto his bed, trying to remember his breathing techniques, and struggling to process the ugly, pulsing knot of emotions that had been tangling beneath his breastbone for almost three weeks straight. For a moment, in the silence, it threatened to overwhelm him, and then Caleb stood up and made his way down to the basement.

**

“Painting isn’t really my thing, I guess,” Chloe explained, showing Caleb her small collection of acrylics. The tubes were a bit dusty, and the red was nearly empty. “I mean, I had to take a few classes last semester, but it’s not as… three dimensional? I like getting my hands dirty, feeling the clay in my fingers, showing it how to move and teaching it what it can be. Sometimes, it feels like you can tell a whole story in the angles on a sculpture, if you can get them right.”

Caleb grimaced. “But it’s so colorless. Like, what if you want to show how things overlap, you know? Or you want to make a picture. It’s not just angles, it’s like, like, textures and brightnesses, and-” He looked up from the tube of yellow paint he’d picked up to see Chloe grinning at him. “What?”

“Do you want to try painting?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, I know you see emotions like- well not see, but colors and stuff, right? No, I know it’s more than that, there’s textures and movement and all that, but the colors are important. You could try canvas? Frank likes using large canvases, and I’ve got all these smaller canvases from when I was doing color theory- no, you don’t have to change your clothes, I’ve got an extra smock-”

“Chloe!” Caleb cut her off, laughing. “Can I, like, respond?”

“Oh, yeah.” Chloe smiled sheepishly. “I get carried away. I can go grab a canvas for you though?”

“Sure, I’d like that. I don’t think I’ve painted anything since eighth grade.”

“That’s okay, who’s gonna judge you? Sometimes you’ve just gotta make something for the hell of it, right? I’ll go get you that smock.”

An hour later, Caleb put down his brush and looked up to see Chloe already turning to look at him. “You can put it by the window to dry, if you want. I’ll show you how to clean the brushes while they’re still wet,” she said, tilting her head towards the sink. They washed the brushes, the palette and water cup together, the afternoon bright shades of blue sprinkled with yellows from Chloe and the pinkish colors of emotions that floated up from down below, muddled up by crowds and muted by the distance.

When they had set the brushes in a cup to dry, Caleb broke the silence, even though he figured Chloe already knew what he was going to ask. “Hey, uh, this was really- really nice, I guess. Do you think you could help me get some paint supplies sometime? I know you don’t really paint, but I- you know, to kind of de-stress, and stuff. I think it would be a good calming technique. When I’ve got too many emotions in my head. To let them out.”

“Of course I can. Are you free tomorrow after school? I think there’s an art store a few blocks from- we could walk there, it’s next to the Starbucks behind your school, if you tell your parents to pick you up a little later, but I’d have to take the bus- hey, no, it’s alright, we can definitely do that.” Chloe smiled.

“I’ll ask Frank what kind of stuff would be good to start with- he’s better with color theory than I am, it’s more his thing. I’ll text you tomorrow, okay?”

**

No one was home yet, so no one noticed Caleb disappear into the back corner of the basement where his easel was. He stopped for a moment to select a CD from his dad’s classical collection, and began to set up the paints he and Chloe had picked out together.

It had been weeks since he had touched his easel- before Damien, at least, and that was- probably, probably why it was so difficult, now, to get his paints out, to breathe, to not punch the canvas or clench his hands around the paint tubes as he added dabs to the paper plate he used for a palette. It helped that the music seemed to match- a glance at the CD case told him the first part of the composition was called Mars, the Bringer of War. He smiled and picked up his brush.

The anger scared him, so he started with a maroon, mixing red and purple, adding too much red before slashing it across the center of the canvas. The color was shocking, not entirely mixed, and the streaks of red in the purple looked closer to resentment or pain than anger. He left it there for a moment, then scraped some excess off and mixed a tiny spot of black into the blue, painting remorse down the canvas in a vertical line. He mixed the blue again, till it was almost to navy, and dabbed some more, mixing it on the canvas with the maroon streak so that the blue seemed to grow from the bruise-colored purple mess.

Wiping his brush, Caleb considered his options, then added some beige paint to the plate and brushed it across the upper corners of the canvas, lighter than before. While the maroon strike across the middle was too thick to paint on top of just yet, the beige went on so thin it dried almost instantly. Bitterness, about holidays, about Adam going to Yale, about all the things he didn’t want to think about. School, football ending, his new therapist, there in the rotten-sand feeling of bitterness, and if it could sound like brakes squealing because their brake pads had worn through, he would make it sound like that too.

Next was yellow, almost goldenrod, for worry. Caleb painted scallops, on top of the beige, along the edges of the maroon and the navy blue, watching the way the worry rose and fell, all along the top and outside edge of the stripes. Then he added orange to the mix, so it was properly goldenrod, the kind that ached against the back of his teeth like when someone grabbed his shoulder by surprise, and added scallops along the bottom and inside edge.

He stared at it for a long moment. The knot was still there, under his breastbone, but it was smaller, looser, beginning to unravel. Caleb wasn’t done with this painting, not yet, but the maroon needed to dry still.

After a moment’s consideration, Caleb took off his smock and went upstairs to wash his brush. He ran the water in the sink a long time, to make sure the paint wouldn’t clog the drain, then went to his room and sent a text. He never took his phone downstairs when he was painting. It only distracted him. When it was sent, he set it on his pillow and went back downstairs.

Back in the basement, Caleb threw away his old palette. The maroon was almost dry, the rest of the canvas completely so. He selected his new colors carefully, even though he already knew what they would be. The CD transitioned from Mercury to Jupiter as he put his smock back on and picked up a fresh brush.

First, Caleb put a spot of yellow at each corner of the canvas, too heavy to leave. Slowly, careful not to disturb the paint still drying, he brushed it inwards, adding more paint to his brush as needed until four long, thick lines curved inwards and met at the center of the canvas, obscuring much of what was already there. He went over the lines again with fresh paint, so they would still be wet, then wiped his brush and added robin’s egg blue.

Just like before, Caleb put four spots on the canvas, top and bottom, right and left. Slowly, he painted them inwards, until they met at the center too, following the curves of the yellow lines and leaving only narrow spaces between them. With a wide brush, he ran over the spaces where the yellow and blue almost touched, so that they mixed, and then ran up them again, so the colors mixed.

He had mixed these colors before, the yellow and the robin’s egg blue, but only on his palette. It was difficult to find a color that expressed comfort, and certainty, and safety, and the way it felt when Adam kissed him, and the way it felt when everything was okay. It was like waking up to a bird singing outside his window and realizing the snow had finally melted for the last time, and that he wouldn’t need his snow boots anymore; it was like waking up to see the first snow, before the streets were plowed.

It was hard to mix this green, and he’d found it on the color wheel before. He had even found a the HTML color name, he remembered, as he mixed the last of the spirals and stepped back. The only colors he could see were yellow, blue, and the green that appeared where they met, smeared and unevenly mixed. He dabbed some yellow over some beige he had missed in one of the corners, and mixed the meeting points on the spiral again, making the colors smoother, as the last of the knot in his chest finally slipped away. The thing about people, Caleb thought, as he cleaned up his space, was that they come with their own palette.

He didn’t do digital art, and neither did Adam, but Caleb had yet to find a name for a green that didn’t sound awful. Things like chartreuse and lime just didn’t sound nice, and anyway, he wanted to be sure he had the right one, because knowing the colors in his palette was important to him.

The color Adam made him feel, when they were alone, playing video games or taking a walk, or when he turned around after a game and saw Adam in the stands and felt his emotions wash over him-  it was #7DF00A. Green. The color of happiness. The color of love.

When he went back upstairs, Adam had responded to his text- of course they could play hang tonight, he and his parents weren’t leaving till tomorrow. Caleb smiled, and texted back a single word- “nerd”.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the lovely Peannaireacht, anowen18, and Turq8 for reading this before it went up and putting up with my incessant questions. Couldn't have done it without you all!


End file.
